Mysterium

by Susan Froderberg

  * * *

  SHE HAD not heard a word from her mother since the night before the party had set out, but Sara received plenty of signs from her that were easily recognizable. She had heard her mother’s ministrations in the burble and swirl of the stream as the sahibs sat drinking their tea. Not so much the words exactly, Sara will admit, but clearly the waters bore Amanda’s reproachful tone. Sara was sent a message first morning out on the trail, a mourning dove turned emissary: home, home, home, the bird coo’d. On every tree that Sara passed in the pale aspen grove, there were her mother’s almond-shaped eyes intaglio’d into the bark. She felt the brush of her mother’s fingers in whisks of chilly air, felt her touch in the sunrays through the cloudbreaks, felt her in the warmth and the itch of the worn emerald-colored sweater.

  Sara could see her mother too, see her in her father, in the hunch of her father’s shoulders, in the distance in his eyes, in the inwardness of his manner and bearing. Her mother was her father’s timbre, his maxims and sighs, his spur and his pause and his grace.

  Sara was perched on a rock next to the edge of the cliff looking down into a barren windswept valley. Out of somewhere, or nowhere, there came a feeling of hands on her shoulders: a hint, a portent, a sense of whatever it was threatening to toss her into the abyss. Sara rose and backed away from the brink, shuddering and cold. An outburst of furious birds shot up from the depths below. Light sparked the sky. Weather cracked in the distance.

  * * *

  HILLARY ADAMS spends most of the morning confused as to what to do. She hobbles about using an umbrella as stave, avoiding the aggrieved looks she believes have settled onto the faces of the others. Doctor Reddy examines her and diagnoses a likely broken toe, as well as an ankle sprain. He offers analgesics and to bind the injury. He speaks of elevation, rest, soaking the foot in an icy stream.

  “Knitbone,” Sara says.

  “What, is that a decree?” Reddy says.

  “Hell,” says Adams. “Why in hell? is all there is to proclaim.” He and Reddy help Hillary get up onto the rocks at the side of the stream. Adams makes clucking noises with his tongue. The Sherpas bring hot cups of tea and simple words of concern. The rest of the group stand about, scanning one another’s eyes, seeking accord or rejoinder. The water flows icy cold over Mrs. Adams’s swollen toe and ankle.

  Sara leaves the group and wanders down over the knoll, away from camp and out of sight. Nothing unusual, perhaps a simple need for a few minutes to herself. But she is gone a long time, and now the others begin to wonder. What next? Troy zips his parka up and starts out in Sara’s direction, mumbling something about the kind of day it has become, when in an instant his daughter appears from over the crest. She carries a bandanna-wrapped bundle in her hands, a delighted smile on her face, and she ignores the remarks and the questions as she carries on with her mission, all eyes on her, enjoying the flood of attention. She opens the bundle on a flat rock next to where Mrs. Adams sits, displaying a collection of broad hairy leaves, some of them flowered and filamented.

  “You’re out collecting posies at a time like this?” Adams says.

  “Comfrey,” she says. “What my mother called knitbone.” She looks around, finds a fist-size rock, and begins to pound the leaves down, making a good pungent mass of the herbs. “Hot water,” Sara says. “Or, here, never mind, this tea will do fine.” She puts the herb mash into the cup of hot tea and stirs it in with a stick, then spreads the warm paste she has made into a thick layer onto her open bandanna, aware of the power of a good performance. “Now I will need your ankle please.” Sara pats herself on the thighs, and Mrs. Adams brings her foot out of the water, dabbing it dry with a sock and settling it gingerly into the hold of the girl’s lap. Sara folds the bandanna into itself to keep the poultice together, and now she uses the steaming packet to wrap the ankle, tying the bandage together snug at the ends before giving a final gentle press of intent to the bones and the flesh all around.

  “The warmth is good,” Hillary says. “If anything.”

  “The poultice will cool and stiffen,” Sara says, “and brace the sprain.”

  It did just that. Meanwhile, Reddy had splinted the toe with a metal instrument from his medical kit. Mrs. Adams claimed the knitbone poultice to be the better remedy as the tenderness in her ankle was relieved. “But with all due respect to the good doctor, the toe is throbbing and growing more painful.” She puts the boot on with difficulty, stands, and looks at the ground. She takes a few limping steps. “It’s tight,” she says. “The toe is too swelled for the boot.” She sits down. She shakes her head, apologizes. She cannot make it through the Gorge walking like a cripple. Adams and Reddy decide between them; the party should remain here at camp until tomorrow. See how Hillary can manage after a day of rest. No one protests, as no one is too eager to face the difficulties of the Gorge.

  Late morning the following day, two porters are assigned to be Hillary Adams’s escorts back down to the village, acting as crutches, piggybacking her down in places where needed. Sara has made for her a mukluk boot of sorts using a down bootie heeled with a rubber-thonged shoe, and around the whole of it a nylon stuff sack brought to the knee and wrapped in plastic bagging that she binds with lacing and tape. “There,” she says. “Padded and waterproofed.” Adams has a look of about-to-cry on his face. He declares he must absolutely go back with his wife; Professor Troy would thereby need to take over as expedition leader. Adams says he will not get to the top of Mysterium a second time, it was simply not meant to be. There are immediate protests, loud, all at once, the voices a chorus of pleading. They tell him they disagree. They tell him they need him. He has been through the hardships of the Sage’s Gorge before and knows the best line to take. He alone knows the route through the Sanctuary and up to the summit. “At least to go as far as Base Camp and help me to manage there,” Vida says. “I can’t do it by myself.” She is ready to go home too.

  “A collective decision must be made,” Mrs. Adams says. “Greatest good for the greatest number, as our professor would tell us. You are obligated to stay with the group and remain leader, Ad,” she says. “It is your duty, absolutely.” She will go back to the village, take her time in the going with the help of the porters and fixed lines, and there should be no arguing. Adams turns about full circle, as if in search of a direction. He raises his arms, looks toward the sky with hands outspread. “A driver will drive me back to Delhi,” Hillary says. “There is never a problem finding a man for hire. In Delhi, there will be people to help me gather my things. I am certainly capable of getting help to the airport and from there flying home on my own,” she says.

  “Quite capable,” her husband says.

  He looks at her with his stone-colored eyes.

  “I am sorry,” she says.

  “I am not happy,” he says.

  “You shall get over it,” she says.

  * * *

  A WOOLLY mist creeps in from the ravine, spilling up and over the spur of earth the camp is perched on. Sherpa Pasang kneels before last night’s fire with bowed head, working to blow life into the dead ashes, but Mingma piles on juniper branches and strikes a match for a quick start. The two Sherpas chuckle between themselves as to the confusion of their identities among the sahibs, knowing their habit of trading hats complicates, though it is a harmless amusement, they agree.

  They ready hot water for the sahibs, filling basins up for the morning ablutions. Then to prepare the day’s first meal: milky tea and watery porridge that the sahibs will sit and eat in silence, crouched about the fire as they watch the porters load up and head out to follow in the path of the herders with their goats, already far in the lead. Virgil Adams complains of intestinal cramps, certainly a most common ailment on any Himalayan trail, but these pains started immediately after his wife had departed with two of the porters to head back to Delhi and home. He makes frequent trips behind the scrubby trees, keeping the rest of the group waiting for departure, though they are patient enough, as few ar
e cheery about the day’s prospects. Doctor Reddy hands Adams a couple of packets of pink tablets from his medical kit. He urges him to drink more tea. “For your mood, I have nothing to offer you,” the doctor says.

  “Better we should get moving while the weather holds,” Troy says. “Sooner we’re out of the netherworld the better.”

  “Who needs to stay in a state of dread any longer than we have to?” Vida says. “My agony junction is already in knots.”

  “Your agony junction?” Reddy says.

  “What?” she says. “You have nothing in your kit for this?”

  “No need to work yourself into a tizzy,” he says.

  “So what if I’m in a tizzy. Is permission needed?”

  “Why to be so loud?” Reddy says, noticing her weak eye skewed wild.

  “What can I say, Doc?” Wilder says. “She gets this way.”

  “Screw you,” Vida says.

  “Should I find something for your nerves?” asks Reddy.

  Wilder snorts.

  “Screw the both of you.” She stomps away.

  The party prepares to head out; filling water bottles, double-lacing boots, cinching backpacks, zipping jackets to the chin. Karma takes the lead, and the others follow along in the cold air, working out the stiffness and the kinks of the night prior, grappling with questions and dreads, slowing the pace for Adams when he breaks from the line to hurry behind a bush or a rock for an urgent squat. They move through wild rhubarb and crawling juniper, past quartzite rocks encrusted with fluorescent lichen, stepping over clumps of goat droppings freshly steaming along the trail. Stratocumulus clouds tent out in high layers above their heads. They read the sky for signs of bad weather, concerned that rain will complicate the day.

  They tramp up an incline following a path along an open shoulder, and after an hour of steady hiking they surmount the ridge. They pause, breathless, and once more face the obsidian jaws of the Gorge: a chasm of jagged rock that strikes like a vicious laugh. In silent defile they move toward it, on into a dampening chill, the clamor from the roaring moat soaring up from below. They follow a precipitous trace that zigzags miles down into the trap of a box canyon, where the moiling waters of the river are hugged by walls cleft and left eerily polished by the glaciers above; black walls that wing sharply up thousands of feet high on either side. Vida works to keep her mind on a single thing, as Wilder had advised when he taught her to climb, that is to lift a leg to plant a foot, putting one foot in front of the other, repeat, repeat, repeat, using the ice axe for stability, breathing rhythmically. Break the task into the smallest pieces. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  The route turns more demanding, and soon handholds are necessary as footholds. They clutch at any prop available: roots or shrub, tuber or creeper, rock or vine, whatever they can find to hold themselves to the slope. Someone makes a pathetic joke in a stroke of passing hysteria. No one laughs. No one says anything: every mind only on the next handhold or foothold afforded. The porters stagger ahead under the weight of the loads, bootless and sure-footed, their agility startling. The herders work to keep up with the goats, animals that make play of the steep.

  Soon enough the way descends headlong again, only to abruptly seesaw steeply back up. What forged this trail of insanity: Was it fright? Confusion? Misery? Villainy? The necessity of escape? They look for alternate paths, finding no mark, no track, no logic. They look at Adams. He shakes his head. They press on in muted procession, making their way farther into the Gorge’s adamantine deeps, moving along a vestige of trail if a trail at all, a trace over thick roots and loose stones forcing them down and up and down once more, through places of dense undergrowth that too often mask dangerous overhangs. The exposed traverse hugs a nightmarish wall of sheer cliff that parallels the turbulent river.

  The party is inching ahead, the stony ground widening out and narrowing and widening again when they are struck by a crackling explosion of rock against rock, sending everyone ducking for cover. Porters cling to roots and vines, bowing down to armor themselves with their cartons and duffels, the goats moving in great bounds and leaps. Rocks whistle and hiss as the mineraled artillery goes spinning by, leaving behind a sulfurous stink that ricochets out in a loud bang. Until finally all falls silent. The halt and standstill are abrupt as the onset: a moment of quiet followed by the lonely surrender and clatter of one last stone. A cloud of boulder powder swirls up out of the ravine. They stay hunkered and raise their heads in heed, hearts clobbering rib cages, a tumid pumping in eardrums. Beside them, a swath of earth is swiped raw, the soil gouged out, shrubs crushed flat. There are words of urgency. A call of names. One of the porters is gushing blood from the split flesh of his head, and Reddy scrambles up to reach him, announcing the injury superficial, removing the bandanna from his throat to swab the man’s wound. Already the other porters have started to move on, not wanting to linger in this accursed place. The sahibs collect themselves, and with wobbly legs and ringing ears they make their way out of the bedlam and down the steep to the river, a white frothing torrent of monsoon and snowmelt roaring in greeting. Hardly relieved, they face their first crossing.

  The goats have found milky pools to drink from, away from the pandemonium of the roil and swell, the bhakrawallas rocks to sit and smoke on. The porters grab hold of their tumplines, bend deep at the knees to deposit baskets and cartons in the sand. The sharp flanks of the canyon walls tower up dramatically, allowing only a pale band of sky above. Within the mammoth landscape all are made very small. Little Jonahs in the belly of the whale.

  Sherpa Karma stands with hands on hips facing the river, the sticky yellow patches of cloth hiding the line that his sight takes. Across the river are clues to a pathway, but how to get there? He puts his hands to his mouth to be heard over the turbulent water, but the words are devoured by its uproar. He points to a natural bridge of sorts: slabs of boulders, a traverse of logs and rocks. Troy nods and finds the porter and the load he is looking for. From out of the porter’s basket he withdraws a coil of rope. He unties the cinch knot and flakes the rope out, re-coils it and square-knots it to hold, and then hitches the loop of the whole over his shoulder. He unclips the backpack from his waist cinch for safety, and steps out onto one of the river’s logs.

  He begins to move forward, feeling the powerful din of the river inside his body, the clamor of waters a hard thudding inside his chest. Small voices from behind skip across the water like stones. He cannot look back without losing balance. He cannot ask. The water sploshes over his boots, numbing cold as it seeps over shafts and in through the seaming. He totters on, log to stone to stone, stepping up onto boulders, one to the next, the water leaping at him like a feral animal through a notch in the rock. Halfway across the river he balances on a boulder, an icy slosh walloping him every which way. He pauses now to look back, catching sight of porters and herders and sahibs, all watching him, strung along as they are at the bottom of a fathomless gorge, just little swallowed things. Troy turns and leaps across to another rock. He works his way down to the logjam, the water in a mad cascade. Logs too slippery to pause on. He moves fast, the churning water slamming him, and then he slips. Shit! Wet hip-deep. Climb out. Step up. Leap. Until his feet are planted into the cowbelly sand of the riverbank. “Sweet mother,” he says.

  He tosses the backpack off, standing erect on the certainty of solid earth. He unknots an end of the coil and half-hitches the rope to a trunk of thick birch. Fingers to his teeth, he lets go a piercing whistle. Wilder raises an open hand to the air. With a strong toss the bulk sails across the water, elegant as an albatross. Wilder snags the tether on the other side, clenches the rope end in his fist.

  The sahibs make it over to the other side of the river, one by one with the help of the rope. The porters with their loads are less sure, as are the bhakrawallas with their bleating walleyed animals. Wilder navigates the river once again, returning back to ferry loads across for those doubtful. Already the shepherds are cutting wide branches and limbs of tr
ees to lay a wider path across the seething waterway. It will be dusk when the goats are finally hazed over the rickety bridge, and gotten at last across the river.

  The Sherpas take the lead, moving upshore in the twilight, finding there a wide sandy bank set back into a copse where they erect the tents and the cook tarp. Porters and herders follow, dropping cartons and barrels, relieving the goats of their panniers. Then the sahibs trail in, unstrapping backpacks, easing their way to the solace of hard ground.

  * * *

  BACKS AND legs aching, minds benumbed with fatigue, the Sherpas keep working. They pitch the tents for the sahibs and find a site upriver for their own abode, the porters and bhakrawallas, as usual, settling with the herd a distance away. Wilder helps the Sherpas pole up a tarpaulin over the cook station, coughing a cough turned hacking, while Vida seeks privacy in the trees, checking herself for leeches routinely. Reddy, curled on a tarp on the ground, dreams aloud in his sleep. Troy takes a place apart from the group to sit with his notebook and pen. His daughter and Devin go out to hunt for firewood, no one but Sara realizing her new love has stuffed a sleeping bag into his pack for them to rest on together. Adams crawls into an empty tent and sprawls out to relax, consoled in knowing his wife has not suffered such a day as today. He imagines her on her way home to safety and ease, home to chicken salad sandwiches, hot lavender baths, the evening news on TV.

  None of them is aware of being followed by a large black cat. The panther had been tracking the party during their crossing to her side of the river, a home range she keeps marked dutifully with scrapes of dirt kicked up by her hind feet. No one is alert to the cat’s signs; not only have they missed the scrapes, but they also do not notice the trunks of the trees inscribed with her scratches and gouges, nor do they see the staggered line of round paw prints she has augured into the mud. They do not see the cylinders of scat seeded with shards of bone, not a hint of the wads of hair or the bits of pelt, nothing at all that marks her whereabouts.